History of Israel

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**GRABBE, Lester L. (ed.), Can a ‘History of Israel’ Be Written? Sheffield, Sheffield Academic Press, 1997, 201 pp. [T. & T. Clark: 2005 - ISBN 0-5670-4320-7]**

Lester L. Grabbe is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism and Head of the Department of Theology at the University of Hull, UK. This book was published in 1997, as the result of the 1st European Seminar on Historical Methodology, a meeting holds by selected scholars in Dublin in July 1996. The book has nine chapters, one introduction by Lester Grabbe, and, at the end, an index of references and an index of authors. There is not a bibliography, but numerous footnotes.

The Problem

Says Lester L. Grabbe at the first paragraph: “The group originates from the frustrations that I, for one, have felt over the current state of the debate about how to write the history of ancient Israel and Judah in the second and first millennia BCE and into the first century or so of the Common Era” (p. 11).

And continues: “In the past several years, a number of scholars – most of them European by origin or adoption – have been making a radical attack on the way the history of ‘Israel’ has been written. Even those once regarded as radical have not escaped the critique. This has been a minority movement and at first made only a measured impact on the debate. Recently, however, it has come into its own, but one response has been the raising of voices in protest, including the suggestion that such trends are dangerous or can be safely ignored or – rather curiously – even both of these at once (p. 11).

Lester L. Grabbe refers to the controversy between the maximalist view “which implies that everything in the sources that could not be proved wrong has to be accepted as historical” and the minimalist view “which means that everything which is not corroborated by evidence contemporary with the events to be reconstructed is dismissed” (E. A. Knauf, cited by H. Niehr in the same book on page 163).

The 1st European Seminar on Historical Methodology

“This suggested that the time was ripe for something more organized to address the central issues in a systematic manner and to determine what the real positions and problems are (…) The initial task was to bring together European specialists who are broadly in agreement that a problem actually exists” (pp. 11-12).

Membership was by invitation and includes the following: Rainer Albertz (Germany), Hans Barstad (Norway), Bob Becking (Netherlands), Robert Carroll (UK), Philip Davies (UK), Josette Elayi (France), Lester Grabbe (UK), Ulrich Hübner (Germany), Knud Jeppesen (Denmark), Axel Knauf-Belleri (Switzerland), Niels Peter Lemche (Denmark), Mario Liverani (Italy), Andrew Mayes (Ireland) Hans-Peter Müller (Germany), Herbert Niehr (Germany), Michael Niemann (Germany), Ed Noort (Netherlands), Thomas Thompson (Denmark), Helga Weippert (Germany), Manfred Weippert (Germany) and Keith Whitelam (UK).

A little report about the others meetings. A 2nd meeting about The Exile was hold at Lausanne in July 1997, and the volume published by Sheffield Academic Press, and edited by L. L. Grabbe, is Leading Captivity Captive. 'The Exile' as History and Ideology, Sheffield, 1999, 161 pp. The 3rd meeting of the European Seminar on Historical Methodology seeks to respond the challenging question, formulated by Niels Peter Lemche: Is the Bible a Hellenistic Book? L. L. Grabbe edited the contributions in the volume of 343 pages. Sheffield Academic Press published Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period in March 2001. And, finally, the meeting of the year 2000 took place at Utrecht, in The Netherlands, in August, to debate about Sennacherib's Invasion of Judah. Sheffield Academic Press published 'Like a Bird in a Cage': The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 BCEin 2003.

Two Questions

But let us return to our book with the words of Lester L. Grabbe: “Our initial format is to read, respond to and critique papers focused on particular issues or themes. This first meeting, however, was devoted to position papers. All papers addressed in some fashion or other the two following questions: Can a ‘history of Israel’ be written and if so, how? What place does the text of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible have in the matter?” (p. 13).

L. L. Grabbe, Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures or Different Animals?

Lester L. Grabbe circulated a copy of his paper – Are Historians of Ancient Palestine Fellow Creatures or Different Animals? pp. 19-36 – to members of the Seminar to stimulate the debate. He thinks of himself as a historian, for he has written a study about Israel’s history, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian I-II, Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress, 1992 (British edition in one-volume paperback, London, SCM Press, 1994).

He concluded the following: 1) We can write a history of ancient Syria-Palestine-Israel. 2) In writing such a history, the biblical text can and must be used. 3) There are great difficulties of using the biblical text, so the use of the text needs to be argued for in each case. 4) The use of the archaeological and biblical sources need to be evaluated each in its own right, and we should avoid to mix promiscuously textual and other data. 5) Imaginative and speculative reconstructions should be admitted and we must indicate the probabilities of any hypothesis.

He argued that the goal of the historians “is to find out ‘what actually happened’” (p. 14). He emphasize that this is the goal of the historians, but many reconstructions may be, at best, tentative. “The historian is probably best described as a juggler. The secret is to keep as many balls as possible in the air at once but without dropping any” (p. 14).

From here to the end of the “Introduction”, the author summarizes the papers of the other seven scholars that contributed to the publication, that is: H. M. Barstad, Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway; B. Becking, Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands; R. P. Carroll, Professor of Old Testament at the University of Glasgow, UK; P. R. Davies, Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK; N. P. Lemche, Professor at the Institute for Biblical Exegesis at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark; H. Niehr, Professor of Biblical Introduction and History of the Biblical Period at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and T. L. Thompson, Professor at the Institute for Biblical Exegesis at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. A conclusion, Reflections on the Discussion, was written by Lester L. Grabbe (pp. 188-196).

H. M. Barstad, History and the Hebrew Bible

H. M. Barstad, History and the Hebrew Bible, pp. 37-64, deals with the question of developments in the field of historiographical study in general, where he criticizes the positivistic posture of most historians and manifests his firm belief that the future belongs to narrative history.

Professor Barstad thinks that scholars like Lemche and Thompson have not achieved a paradigm shift but are still in the positivistic tradition of nineteenth-century historiography. He says: "Scholars like Lemche and Thompson have been eager to use the concept 'paradigm shift' of their own contributions to biblical historiography. This, however, is far from being an adequate description of what is really going on. Lemche and Thompson, apparently unaware of the fact that what may call a conventional concept of history is highly problematic, still work within the parameters of historical critical research, assuming that history is a science and that one must work with 'hard' facts" (pp. 50-51).

Barstad says that "they have come to represent the first of the last modernists" (p. 51) and argues: "In the future we shall, irreversibly, have to adjust to a different view on history from that of the historical-critical methods of the nineteenth century: a history with different 'truths' that are much less (when at all) the result of scientific analyses of empirical data. A history whose epistemic standing should no longer be regarded as part of science, but as a part of culture. A history characterized by a multiplicity of methods" (pp. 51-52).

B. Becking, Inscribed Seals as Evidence for Biblical Israel? Jeremiah 40.7-41.15 par exemple

B. Becking, Inscribed Seals as Evidence for Biblical Israel? Jeremiah 40.7-41.15 par exemple, pp. 65-83, seeks to answer three questions: What is meant by ‘Israel’? What is meant by ‘history writing’? and How is the Old Testament text used as a historical source? He concludes with a positive answer about the possibility of a history of Israel and the use of the Old Testament as one of its sources.

R. Carroll, Madonna of Silences: Clio and the Bible

R. Carroll, Madonna of Silences: Clio and the Bible, pp. 84-103, asks about the limits between reality and fiction, using the analogy of Ossian, a supposed third-century Celtic poet and Balaam, Omri and Baruch. To the question ‘can a history of ancient Israel be written?’ he says: “I am inclined to answer ‘No’” (p. 101).

P. R. Davies, Whose History? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical Histories, Ancient and Modern

P. R. Davies, Whose History? Whose Israel? Whose Bible? Biblical Histories, Ancient and Modern, pp. 104-122, accepts that histories of an ancient Israel can be written, but not the history of the ancient Israel.

Philip R. Davies thinks that the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible can be used in reconstructing history in two ways: primary and secondary. In the primary respect "the first task of the historian is to discover (or provide) the historical context of these writings, on the principle that the historical testimony of any work will be relevant in the first instance to the time in which it was written" (p. 104). In the secondary respect "what these writings may say about historical events might be used to build a picture of the periods which they claim to be describing" (...), but "the use of biblical historiographical narrative for critical reconstruction of periods that it describes (...) is precarious and only possible where there is adequate independent data", he argues on p. 105.

He concludes that a historian can do three things today: “Not to discourage the production of good historiographies; (…) to expose deceits practised in the name of history and (…) to remain sceptical, minimalist and negative” (p. 122).

N. P. Lemche, Clio is Also Among the Muses! Keith W. Whitelam and the History of Palestine: a Review and a Commentary

N. P. Lemche, Clio is Also Among the Muses! Keith W. Whitelam and the History of Palestine: a Review and a Commentary, pp. 123-155, in a paper already published, reviews the book of Keith Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, London, Routledge, 1996, to which he added a short paper read at Dublin, History of Palestine or History of Syria. Lemche says on page 149: “I now come to the conclusion to this review which has generally been critical but positive. It had to be done! No doubt about it. Whitelam has written a very brave – but also a very politically correct – book, timely according with the establishment in Palestine of the first institutions of a Palestinian state”. The subject of Whitelam’s book is that the history of the ancient peoples of Palestine has been silenced in favour of an exclusive interest in Israel. But in History of Palestine or History of Syria, Lemche alerts the reader that Whitelam “is not very specific as to the identity of his ancient Palestinians (…) the reason probably being that he has introduced a new entity to the historical scene, the ancient Palestinians, thus probably having invented a new people which may in fact never themselves have existed or recognized themselves to be Palestinians” (p. 151).

H. Niehr, Some Aspects of Working with the Textual Sources

H. Niehr, Some Aspects of Working with the Textual Sources, pp. 156-165, looks at the question of the various types of sources, i. e., historical anthropology (data delivered by geography, archaeology, climatology and so on); primary sources (reports contemporary or close to the events they narrate, as written sources from outside Palestine, written sources from inside Palestine and archaeological evidence from Palestine); secondary sources (the Old Testament) and tertiary sources (books that rework secondary sources, as the books of Chronicles). Finally, he looks at the methodological problems with using each of them, arguing that the attempts to bridge the gap between these sources are to be cautiously made.

T. L. Thompson, Defining History and Ethnicity in the South Levant

T. L. Thompson, Defining History and Ethnicity in the South Levant, pp. 166-187, divides his paper intro three parts: in the first, he criticizes some recent writings of the archaeologist William Dever; in the second, he reviews the insights of Keith Whitelam’s recent book, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (“This new book might well serve as a useful methodological prolegomena to a history of Palestine, says Thompson on page 178); and in the last part he argues for an historiography more archaeological and geographically based. Thompson, Cryer and Lemche are working with a ‘spectrum method’, that “shows some promise in dealing with both large quantities of data and data of great variety” (p. 181).

L. L. Grabbe, Reflections on the Discussion

Lester L. Grabbe, Reflections on the Discussion, pp. 188-196, says that the Seminar shows that some disagreements amongst the scholars were matters of words only.

On the other hand, all agreed that a history of ancient Palestine, Syria, the Levant or whatever term we make use, should have the goal of covering all the region and the peoples in it. "But to treat a history of one particular 'nation' as the history is mistaken, especially if that history accepts only a chauvinistic ideology which treats others inhabitants of the region as inferior, insignificant, non-existent, or even as worthy of annihilation. To canalize all our activity through 'biblical history', 'biblical archaeology', 'biblical geography' etc is simply to write bogus history", says the author on p. 189. Even the use of the term 'Israel' as a political term has its problems, and to write a 'history of Israel' as the history of an ethnic entity is simply too question-begging, as Keith Whitelam has demonstrated in his The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.

Not one member of the Seminar denies the existence of the 'kingdom of Israel' - and of the 'kingdom of Judah' - well know from Assyrian inscriptions, but Seminar members object to two common assumptions: "(a) that the literary construct of 'biblical Israel' can be immediately translated into historical terms, and (b) that 'Israel' should dominate and canalize study of the region in antiquity. The biblical picture of a large Israelite empire is to be treated with great scepticism" (p. 198).

There was agreement that the implications of postmodernism for the historical question need to be accepted, but this need not require the historians to abandon their task. The question of whether the scholars are ready to accept a paradigm shift, however, is an acute one "since even the more radical of the 'minimalists' are still really in the old mould", says Lester L. Grabbe on pp. 189-190.

This leads on to the question of the different ideas of what constitutes a history, for there is a great variety of meanings between the members of the Seminar.

The use of the biblical text in writing an 'History of Israel' was a controversial question in the discussions. And there were at least two reasons for this: "first, the biblical text has been widely used - and abused - in writing history, so it must be dealt with, if only to show the inappropriate use of it as a source; secondly, the Old Testament text is the most extensive collection of data which claims to represent ancient Israel, and questions of whether and how it can be used must be addressed" argues Lester L. Grabbe on pp. 190-191, even if he desires not to let the problem dominate the Seminar.

Since most of the influential recent ‘Histories of Israel’ are in substance a rationalistic paraphrase of the biblical texts, scholars like Robert Carroll seems to reject any history as 'bogus history', whereas others like Niehr, Becking and Grabbe would argue that the biblical text must be used very carefully and critically.

As far as that goes, it seems that the historians can proceed in one of four different ways (cf. p. 192):

1. Assume no history is possible and give up the historical task. No one in the Seminar has in fact chosen this alternative.

2. Ignore the biblical text as a whole and write any history entirely on archaeology and other primary evidence: this is the true 'minimalist' position, but the difficulty is that the interpretative framework still depends heavily, if indirectly, on data from the Bible at certain points. None of the Seminar has chosen this route.

3. Give priority to the primary data but make use of the biblical text as a secondary source, allowing it to contribute to the historical task but cautiously and critically. Almost all members of the Seminar seem to fall somewhere in (3) or perhaps between (2) and (3).

4. All members of the Seminar rejected the 'maximalist' position, if by this is meant the position of accepting the biblical account except where it can be shown to be wrong.

Positions 1 and 4 are irreconcilable and even outside the spectrum of a critical ‘History of Israel’. Position 1 rejects the historical task and position 4 treats the biblical text differently from other historical sources. Only the dialogue between the positions 2 and 3 is possible, concludes Lester L. Grabbe on p. 193.

In conclusion, the book offers a serious contribution to the debate about how to write the History of Israel, with a comprehensive view of the different perspectives of high level scholars and, that is the most important, scholars disposed to continue the debate in a productive way. Today, after 4 years of this 1st European Seminar on Historical Methodology, with the accomplishment of other three meetings, the debate is riper than once, and it arrives here in Brazil, where the “Biblistas Mineiros”, a group of biblical scholars that meets usually in Belo Horizonte to edit the Journal Estudos Bíblicos (Biblical Studies), is debating the subject for an issue to be published by Vozes Press in 2001.

For those that want to be up to date about the current debate in the field, the list ANE (Ancient Near Eastern) is a good choice. I commend also the article of Mario Liverani, Nuovi sviluppi nello studio della storia dell’Israele biblico, em Biblica 80 (1999), pp. 488-505, that is available in Biblica On-line at http://www.bsw.org/.

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